Daydream Retriever (An Alpine Grove Romantic Comedy Book 10)

by Susan C. Daffron

  “I can’t. Today is Mia’s day off, so I’m on dog-walking duty. I have to wait around for FedEx and Joel took the truck, so I’m stuck here. He’s dropping off film for me in town. I took a photo this morning of a dog that we want to feature in the AGAA newsletter.”

  “Well, that explains why I saw Joel across the street near the photo place. Who’s that woman?”

  “What woman?”

  “The one he was walking with. I thought it was his sister at first, then I realized the woman was tall and blonde, but definitely not Cindy. I figured you’d know who it was.”

  “No clue. All he said this morning was he’s meeting some guy he went to college with named Casey.”

  “Are you sure Casey is a male of the species?”

  “I’ve never met a woman named Casey. I guess I assumed Joel was talking about a guy.”

  Maria was silent for a moment. “Maybe you should get some specifics about this friend, like which box he or she checks on the gender column. In the meantime, I’ll keep my eye out the window and snoop when I can.”

  “You do have a front-row seat on Alpine Grove pedestrian traffic.”

  “Don’t knock it. It helps me remain well informed about what’s going on within our fine community.”

  Kat laughed. “No kidding. You always have all the good dirt.”

  “You know it, girlfriend.”

  After agreeing on a time to meet at the bar, Kat hung up the phone slowly. The slightly sick feeling in her stomach had returned. Had Joel ever mentioned that Casey was male? Joel had said so little over the last few days, you’d think Kat would remember.

  She shook her head, exasperated by her swirling thoughts. The idea of Joel cheating on her was impossible. Even apart from the fact that he loved her, the man was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. If he had something to hide, he wouldn’t parade some girlfriend in front of the ad agency where Maria worked. Kat needed to talk to him. They’d clear everything up like they always did. After all, they were engaged and getting married in less than two months.

  Kat crossed her arms on the table, laid her head on them, and closed her eyes. She was so incredibly tired all the time. The word exhaustion didn’t cover it anymore. But only one more set of chapters and this awful book project would be over.

  She started awake at pounding on the wooden front door and the resulting cacophony of barking from the downstairs hallway. Leaping up, she grabbed the package from the counter and ran to the entryway.

  She opened the door and grinned at Marty, the FedEx man. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.” He grabbed it, handed her the form, and ran back down the stairs. “On my way.”

  Kat waved as the white truck whizzed down the driveway. Marty had to be the fastest delivery person in the West. One time, he’d somewhat sheepishly admitted that he’d trashed the suspension on multiple vehicles by exceeding the speed limit on the washboard-filled dirt roads that criss-crossed the rural county. His lead foot might be hard on his vehicles, but at least Kat could be sure her package was absolutely, positively going to get there overnight.

  After FedEx left, Kat wrote the newsletter article about Harley, redid the newsletter layout, and tended to many dogs. By the time Joel returned, she was upstairs relaxing with a novel and a cup of tea. She got up and walked into the entryway to say hello.

  He paused in hanging his coat in the closet to hand her the packet of photographs. “Here you go.”

  She took the package, walked back into the kitchen, and tossed them on the counter. Turning, she leaned back on the counter. “Thanks. I have a question for you.”

  “If it’s about the photos, I didn’t look at them. I picked them up and came home.”

  “How was breakfast?”

  “That’s your question?”

  Kat shook her head. “I’m getting there. I can’t believe I’m asking you this, but is Casey male or female?”

  Joel looked startled for a second. “She’s a woman.”

  “You never mentioned that, which is sort of strange, now that I look back on it. Which I have been for most of the day. Phrasing sentences with no gender-specific pronouns is tricky.”

  “It wasn’t relevant.”

  “Relevant? You didn’t correct me when I called her a guy. That isn’t relevant?”

  Joel tilted his head slightly. “Okay, so maybe I didn’t want to have this conversation.”

  “What conversation? You mean the conversation where I point out that you lied to me?”

  “No, the conversation where me going to breakfast with an old friend who happens to a woman is an issue.”

  “It’s not an issue.”

  “Good.” He turned to go downstairs. “I should get to work.”

  Kat followed him down the stairs and through the gate, shoving aside the crowding dogs. “Wait a minute! I want to talk to you.”

  Joel sat down at his desk, leaned back in the chair, and crossed his arms across his chest. “All right.”

  Kat stood in front of him. “What is going on with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You said you had a lot on your mind. So what is it?”

  He looked away from her and out the window. “I’m not sure how to explain it.”

  “Does it have to do with Casey?” Kat took a couple of steps closer to him. “Talk to me. What happened?”

  “Casey and I were in a bunch of the same classes in college. We ran across each other again on an alumni forum online, and we started sending emails. It’s no big deal.”

  Kat’s eyes widened. “So she wasn’t just passing through Alpine Grove. She came to see you.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Should I be worried about this? Because I’m starting to feel like I want to throw up. What is happening here?”

  Joel rubbed his palms over his eyes. “Don’t get all insecure on me. Nothing is going on. Nothing. She’s going through a divorce, and she needed someone to talk to. So we talked.”

  “I’m not being insecure.” Kat reached over and clasped one of his hands in both of hers. “But I don’t understand why you lied to me.”

  “I didn’t lie. I omitted a few facts, but I didn’t lie.”

  “Wow. Okay, if that’s how you want to play this, fine. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about you, it’s that when you don’t want to talk, you don’t.” Kat dropped his hand and quickly wiped an errant tear from the corner of her eye. “Obviously, you’re not going to tell me what’s really going on in your head.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about this right now. I have a lot of work to do.”

  “I’m going to walk dogs. Then I’m going to town, so I need the truck. Maybe by the time I get back, you’ll be in more of a mood to talk.” Tears began welling in her eyes, but Kat was not going to cry in front of him. She whirled around and scuttled out of his office, across the hall into hers, slamming the door behind her. Flopping face-first onto the bed, she hugged the pillow to muffle her hot, angry sobs.

  A loud bark from the hallway woke Kat. Her face was salty and sticky where she’d smashed it into the pillow, and now in addition to being angry and sad, she also had a headache. The idea that sometimes you “needed a good cry” was idiotic, since afterward you usually felt like you’d been run over by a semi truck.

  She glanced at the clock. The dogs were probably barking because it was time for their afternoon excursion through the forest. Oops. Sorry guys. Dragging herself up off the bed, she quickly scanned the photo of Harley and finished up the newsletter layout.

  Afterward, she went out to the hall and leashed up the canine gang. The door to Joel’s office was closed, which was fine. She didn’t want to see him until he was ready to talk to her about…whatever it was they weren’t talking about. Somehow they’d managed to have a fight about almost nothing.

  Once her dog-walking duties were complete and she’d handed off the newsletter to Brigid, Kat got into the truck and drove to town. Joel had rema
ined sequestered in his office and she was glad to have an excuse to get out of the house. It had been too long since she had been anywhere. Book deadlines had made her life miserable for what seemed like forever.

  To avoid the horrors of parallel parking the curmudgeonly old vehicle, Kat parked the truck in the lot at Maria’s apartment complex and walked the two blocks to the ad agency where Maria worked. She waved at her friend through the plate-glass window and went inside.

  Maria gathered up her purse and coat and made a shooing motion toward the door. “Let’s go, girlfriend, before someone thinks of something else I’m supposed to do. It’s Friday after five, and they need to accept the fact that nothing more is happening until Monday.”

  Kat turned and they hustled back outside into the cold evening. Maria had donned her huge fake-fur coat, which, with the matching fur-trimmed boots, gave her an unfortunate resemblance to Grizzly Adams.

  Maria took Kat’s arm and looked around to peer into her face. “Girlfriend, what happened to you? Have you slept at all? You look like death.”

  “I took a nap this afternoon.”

  “I’m a fan of naps, but yours didn’t do the job. I think we need to have a conversation about concealer. Because those dark circles under your eyes are not attractive at all.”

  “You know I hardly ever wear makeup. And certainly not to go to the Soloan.”

  “I suppose you have point. No matter what you do, the flickering neon of the beer signs isn’t going to be flattering.”

  They walked down the street until they got to a sign that said Mystic Moon Soloan. The bar was referred to as the “Soloan” thanks to the misspelling of the word saloon on the sign. Given that no one had ever gotten around to fixing the sign for forty or fifty years, it was unlikely to change anytime soon. Kat yanked on the huge wooden door and they went into the dimly lit bar.

  Larry Lowell leaped up from his bar stool and made a beeline for Maria, who gripped Kat’s arm more tightly.

  “Don’t you dare leave me, girlfriend,” Maria whispered to Kat as she smiled demurely at Larry’s approaching form.

  Kat nodded as she settled into a bar stool next to Maria. She waved to the bartender. “Hi Fred. I’ll have some tonic water with lemon.”

  He nodded and raised his eyebrows at Maria, who said, “The usual, please.”

  Fred turned away to make the beverages as Larry settled onto a bar stool next to Maria and began whispering urgently.

  Kat tried to stifle a sigh and picked up the cardboard coaster in front of her. She put it on end, holding it upright with her index finger. With a flick of her fingers, she watched as it spun briefly and fluttered down to the bar. It was going to be a long evening.

  After Fred delivered the drink, Kat had a straw wrapper and napkin she could use to amuse herself in addition to the cardboard coaster. After a few false starts with the straw wrapper, she settled on a complicated origami-like zig-zag folding. Moving on to the napkin, she was tearing small holes to create a snowflake while Maria continued to listen to Larry’s monologue. It was odd for Maria to be so quiet. Maybe she was waiting him out. No one could talk forever, although Larry was a lawyer, so his speech could take a while. Kat hunched over her drink and expanded and contracted the origami straw wrapper.

  Kat looked up from her paper projects and smiled as Lisa sat down next to her. Even though Lisa might not be her best friend, at least Kat knew who she was and it was good to see a familiar face. “I didn’t know you frequented the Soloan.”

  Lisa said, “I try not to, but I need to get Larry to sign something for me because a contractor is coming tomorrow.”

  “I try to avoid this place too, but my friend dragged me here to keep her company. You have a contractor working on a Saturday? That’s remarkable.”

  “It’s complicated and you don’t want to know. I’ve had a long day of talking to people. Brigid sent me here and Larry shushed me. He told me to wait while he talks to his friend Maria over there, which he knew would piss me off. Sometimes I wish he was still in elementary school so I could beat him up. But I left Harley in Larry’s truck, which is the next-best thing. The longer it takes for him to sign this, the more likely it is that Harley will start chewing. It will serve Larry right if Harley eats his way out of that old truck.”

  Kat opened up her ratty-looking napkin snowflake and made a face. “Harley would never do that.”

  “You and Brigid were right when you said he doesn’t like being alone.”

  “When Harley visits me, he gets to stay in the extra-special, industrial-strength kennel.”

  “That reminds me—I was so focused on getting Harley to sit still for his photo, I forgot to ask. Could I use my other day of free boarding tomorrow? I know it’s really late notice.”

  Kat glanced at Lisa. No kidding, late notice. Was there an open kennel? The basset was leaving in the morning, so it should work. “I guess so. Is it only for one night?”

  “Yes, I’m going out again. I mean, well, someone asked me out. I was going to have him come to the house, but the place is too embarrassing and I can’t face it. Ugh. I sound like I’m in junior high school, blabbing about how a boy likes me and worrying about what he thinks about my parents’ house.”

  “If it’s just one night, it’s fine. I have more dogs coming in next week.” Kat tried to smile reassuringly. Lisa looked so mortified at her romantic confession that Kat wasn’t sure what to say. “But if you have a date, that’s good, right?”

  “Maybe. At least I know this guy a little. Or I did a long time ago. If Harley’s not around, we can meet at a restaurant. That would be so much better than making him dinner. I don’t know what I was thinking. At least this date has got to be better than the blind date I went on the last time Harley stayed with you.” Lisa smacked her hand on the bar. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. When it comes to my friends and family, I can’t think of an excuse to say no, so I say yes. My friend Bev says I’m a pushover and she’s right.”

  Kat put down the napkin. This was getting more interesting. “You went on a blind date in Alpine Grove? I haven’t lived here long, but that’s unusual, isn’t it? Everybody knows everybody else.”

  “It turns out he was a tourist, which Bev didn’t mention. And now he thinks I’m about to die. It was a nightmare.” Lisa heaved a big sigh. “Ugh, enough about me. I think about myself and my life and it’s all so boring. When did you move here?”

  “About a year and a half ago when I inherited my aunt’s house.”

  “After leaving here, I vowed never to return, but here I am. That was another time I said yes when I should have said no. I don’t know what is wrong with me.”

  Kat took a sip of her water. “Why did you come back?”

  “Larry talked me into it by playing the family card. I couldn’t say no. Now I’m working on fixing up my parents’ house, so they can sell it. That’s another nightmare.”

  “Why?”

  “It just is. Family stuff makes me crazy.”

  “I can understand that. I’m sure there are things you missed about Alpine Grove though.”

  “Well, it’s still pretty here. Beautiful, actually. But I hate everyone knowing everything about me. It’s different if you grew up here. No one ever forgets anything. Maybe it would help if I put my wedding ring back on.”

  “You’re married?”

  “No, I’m divorced. You’re probably the only person in Alpine Grove who doesn’t know that. And contrary to what Jonah may think, I’m not about to die either.”

  “I don’t know Jonah, but that’s good. I’m sorry about your marriage though.” Kat paused, trying to decide if she was nosy enough to ask what she wanted to ask. What the heck? “This is probably too personal, but I’m getting married soon and, uh, I’m curious why you got divorced.”

  Lisa glanced at her quickly. “I suppose that’s not a secret either. We got married young and over time, we grew apart.”

  “You mean you didn’t love each other anymor
e?”

  “That wasn’t really it. I’ll always love Mike in some way. It was more like we ran out of things to say to each other.” Lisa gazed up at the bottles of liquor behind the bar. “He’s a doctor and I was a stay-at-home mom. Once the kids grew up and left the house, Mike and I had nothing to talk about anymore. Nothing in common.”

  Kat put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her palm. The idea of not having something to say to Joel anymore made her want to cry. “That’s so sad.”

  “The fact that I got sick didn’t help either. That’s a whole different issue. But I’m hoping it’s all behind me now. When is your wedding?”

  “March.”

  “Are you asking me this because you’re worried about getting married?”

  Kat tore another piece off her napkin. Was she really that transparent? “Maybe. I wasn’t worried at all when we got engaged, but my fiancé has been behaving really oddly lately. I’m worried he’s regretting having met me.”

  “Have you talked to him about it?”

  “I tried, but it didn’t go well.” Kat frowned. That was an enormous understatement.

  “Try again. The only way to work out problems is to talk about it. Mike and I stopped doing that. When we lost interest in trying, that’s when we knew it was over.”

  Kat stopped fiddling with her napkin snowflake and laid it down on the bar. “You’re absolutely right. I need to go home.”

  “Me too. Shall we break up the negotiations over there?”

  “I’ve been trying not to eavesdrop, but I don’t think Larry is ever going to shut up and Maria isn’t stopping him.” Kat turned away from Lisa and gripped Maria’s arm. “I’ve got to go. You’re on your own.”

  Maria looked at her and hissed, “Don’t you dare leave me!”

  “I need to talk to Joel.”